Dathan Ritzenhein: Birth Of Great Marathoner?

WHEN I FIRST SAW DATHAN RITZENHEIN RACE IN EARLY 2001, he was a scrawny but almost
unbeatable high-school cross-country star from Michigan. Even then,
people were telling him that he was born to be a marathoner. His speed
was good, but his endurance and abiity to push hard over long distances
were superior. The marathon, it seemed, was his future. It was only
a question of when that future would arrive. I was one of those excited
about the prospects and eager to witness the day of Ritz's first
marathon. Now it has come and gone, and we're all trying to figure out
what it meant.

Ritz ran Sunday in the 2006 ING New York City
Marathon, finishing 11th in 2:14:01, not a bad performance but not what
some had been predicting. And perhaps not what he had been expecting
himself. But he hasn't lost any optimism, or rethought his dreams. “I
still think I was born to be a marathoner,” he said as he left his
interview in the Marathon's press center. “I’m still young and healthy.
I trained smart for this race, but not as hard as many of the others
I’ve read about. I just need to get a lot more miles on my legs.”

He
also gave one of the all-time great, colorful descriptions of what it’s
like to hit the Wall. Ritz was going strong at 22 miles, not all that
far behind the eventual second- and third-place finishers. Then, wham,
bam, thank-you marathon. “Your whole body starts tingling like you’re
really cold, only you’re not cold,” he said. “You can’t lift your arms
or your legs. No matter how hard you try, you basically can’t move. And
there’s nothing you can do to dig yourself out of the pits.” He
estimated that he ran over 6 minute pace for the last 4 miles. We know
this for sure: He clocked 7:59 for the last 2K, which is basically 6:24
per mile, surely slower than Ritz has ever run before in a race.

Until
the last 4 miles, things went quite swimmingly. At least it was easy to
run with the leaders, given their modest pace. “It was a very strange
race,” he said. “I can’t really understand or say what happened. But
there were a lot of lead contenders who didn’t have a good race today.
We were so slow and so tightly bunched in the early miles.” At the half
marathon, Ritz was still with the leaders at 1:05:30. On First Ave,
after Ramaala broke things apart, Ritz stuck to a steady pace and was
looking good to run a 2:11 or so…. Until….

“I just hit my energy
limit,” he said. “I had no glycogen left. I was trying to run on
secondary fuels. I’m not a scientist or anything, but I was suddenly
exhausted.”

After finishing, while still hopeful about the
marathon long term, Ritz sounded unsure about next year, and the big
USA Marathon Trials that will be held in Central Park the day before
the 2008 ING NYC Marathon. “I’m not sure I’ll run the Marathon Trials
next year,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of improving still to do in the
5000 and 10,000 on the track. You can’t do everything at once, and I
want to maximize my track career before I switch to the marathon
fulltime. I’ve had a great fall of training, and I’m healthy and fresh
for what I think can be a great, great track season next summer.

“Today, at least I can say I was in the race. I might not have run the easiest way possible, but I gave it a shot.”

Some
marathon observers were disappointed by Ritz's 2:14. It's a long way,
they point out, from the 2:08s, 2:07s, and faster times that now define
worldclass marathoning. I'm not one of the discontented, however. I
like the way he ran with the leaders for 15 miles and continued
stalking them until he bonked at 22. He didn't aim for one of those
conservative, first-time, negative-splits races. He ran for the Whole
Enchilada, or Big Apple, or whatever we should call it in New York. And
that's a characteristic that I think will serve him well in the
marathon.

That, and a ton of endurance, and the ability to push hard and harder in the long run.

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